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2006Dante, Homer, Garfield, & Mother Goose!
6 Comments | Posted by Ginger in Collection Management, Reading, The Blog Itself
I stumbled across the top 1,000 titles held by OCLC member libraries in a item posted yesterday in the Comics Reporter. The author of the post was bemoaning the high ranking held by Garfield, (#15!), as possibly the comic with the widest distribution in libraries.
The first few hundred titles in the OCLC list are mainly titles we might associate with classic canonical literature, with some classic children’s lit thrown into the mix. These would be books held widely in both public and academic libraries, I suppose. Is there anything on this list that does surprise you? Did you expect popular culture items to rank higher on the list? And why did Garfield catapult to the top? Weirdness.
6 Comments for Dante, Homer, Garfield, & Mother Goose!
Steve | March 28, 2006 at 10:04 am
Dave | March 28, 2006 at 10:51 am
Ginger -
That is fascinating.
To be honest, I’m most shocked about the non-Western classics that appear so highly ranked, like the Bhagadvagita (#23), Rubaiyat (#44), and the Arabian Nights (#18).
Shakespeare is absolutely the king, even if Garfield and Odie and Nermal scratched their way – rank-wise – above most of Shakespeare’s works. Odd to think how many instances of those plays exist in our libraries and how few people can read his English, or would even want to.
The most owned piece of music is amazingly Handel’s Messiah (#45). What, not L.L. Cool J’s “Bad”?
Author comment by Barry | March 28, 2006 at 11:34 am
I’m with Ginger, I spent many a summer break reading up on Garfield’s exploits before my tastes matured and led me to that Holy Trinity of Bloom County, The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes. The comics pages has yet to recover from their leaving!
A quick scan of the list revealed that I own 10 of the top 25. Does this make me mainstream?
Author comment by Barry | March 28, 2006 at 11:40 am
Oops – I misread that, I blame my CPA-disorder, Steve was the Garfield devotee.
So Steve, what was up with that dude Lyman? Did he and Jon have something going on, or was he just a plot device to introduce Odie?
Ginger | March 29, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Steve/Mr. How does it work?
I was wondering the same thing. How did they compile this thing? Did they collate all the multiple editions and versions of various works? And how accurately.
A bit of an answer: http://www.oclc.org/research/top1000/about.htm
My thinking was perhaps that’s why Garfield is so high; because there are 100’s of titles and volumes that have been published over the years and collated together would make a sizable entry.
And, I must admit, I had a Garfield poster in my room when I was 5 or 6. I think I might have got it out of a cereal box or some sort of free give away.
Dave | March 30, 2006 at 10:56 am
Here’s an interesting thought: what about genres of writing that don’t necessarily get published at the book level?
I’m thinking of short fiction and poetry, in particular.
I wonder how many examples of Faulkner’s “The Bear” or Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” – collected in so many anthologies since five decades ago – exist in our libraries. How many instances of John Donne’s “The Flea”?
My guess is that it would be a stupendous number, if something like that was measurable.
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As a 4th-grade convert to the Church of Feline Lasagna, I understand the Garfield addition completely…
I am actually a bit suprised that some kind of cataloging rules isn’t on the list…